


light

by paintedpolarbear



Series: Pynch Week 2017 [2]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, M/M, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 15:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11671962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedpolarbear/pseuds/paintedpolarbear
Summary: When the tones drop at four in the morning, Adam briefly entertains the fantasy of rolling over and getting more sleep. Then he puts his boots on.





	light

_ <<Medic Nine, stand by for tone.>> _

 

The chime of an incoming text message woke him up more fully than the staticky radio ever did; even the tones a half-second later barely elicited a snort from Cheng across the room. Adam groaned and rolled over, reaching blindly for his phone and glasses--he rarely bothered with contacts once second half rolled around--and fumbled for his belt buckle. Checked the text: call information, address, chief complaint...time: three-fifty. He permitted himself one fantastical second of imagining rolling back over, falling back asleep, and waking up sometime next week more fully rested than he had ever been in his life...then he dragged himself upright and shoved his feet in the scuffed boots lying near his bedside table, where he’d kicked them off three hours ago.

 

This had better be goddamn important.

 

_ <<You’re responding to ninety-five-oh-nine Anderson Road, cross is East Roehampton….>> _

 

He cranked the truck and mapped the address while he waited for Cheng to piss, and chugged the last of his leftover gas-station coffee he’d left in the cupholder. It was cold, sickeningly sweetened, full of grounds, and absolutely disgusting. But he was awake.

 

_ <<On scene you have an eight-year-old female, unresponsive with high fever, caller is advising her temp has been elevated since yesterday morning.>> _

 

“Fucking finally. You know it's gonna be a twenty-minute response time, right? The house is in the exact center of Shitting Nowhere.” Cheng just tossed his head, impossibly failing to dislodge even a single strand of hair, and pulled the parking brake. Adam flicked the emergency lights, decided against putting on the siren as well, and picked up the radio so Cheng could focus on the road. Lights without sirens was technically illegal in Virginia, or at least against protocol, but who wanted to be woken up at four in the morning by the most obnoxious, attention-grabbing sound in the world?

 

_ <<Copy, dispatch, show Medic Nine responding. Do you still have the caller on the line?>> _

 

_ <<Affirmative.>> _

 

_ <<Please advise caller to keep an eye on her for febrile seizures, not to hold her down but just keep her from hitting her head.>> _

 

_ <<Copy.>> _

 

The house really was in the middle of nowhere: the last mailbox they passed must have been over a mile ago, and the driveway they now faced was little more than twin ruts in the grass, stretching out into the darkness beyond the headlights. Cheng let out a low whistle.

 

“We’ve seen worse,” Adam said, as much for his own benefit as for Cheng’s. He doubted the ruts could legally be considered a driveway. “Come on. Nice and easy.”

 

At least the ride was fairly smooth. The lack of potholes made Adam suspect that the owner of the house maintained the driveway in its current state on purpose.

 

“Oh thank God, an actual pad,” Cheng said. The headlights were focused on the young man in the front door shining a flashlight on the smooth concrete where they were clearly supposed to park. Adam thought it was wide enough to do donuts--in the bariatric unit. “If I had to drag this cot through any more gravel today I was gonna shoot an eight-year old.”

 

Adam almost dropped the mic from laughter.

 

_ <<Show Medic Nine on scene.>> _

 

_ <<Copy at oh-four-thirty.>> _

 

Once they were through the door, adrenaline jacked his heart rate through the roof. Adam breathed deliberately slowly as he gripped the cot harder to keep his hands from shaking, but he still felt tense and on-edge. Kids were never easy. And the man who was presumably the girl's father didn't look like he was going to make it any easier.

 

Adam didn't know what he had been expecting, but it certainly wasn't this: a towheaded girl who looked too small to be eight, limply unconscious in the lap of someone who fit the dictionary definition of the word ‘thug’--black tank top, ratty sweatpants, bare feet, shaved head, tattoos, lip piercing. He looked up sharply when the door opened and appeared to decide he was not happy to see them, despite the cell phone on the floor close enough to be on speaker with the dispatcher. Adam wrestled with his mental checklist, wondering whether appearances deceived quite _that_ much. The jury remained out.

 

“Took you assholes long enough,” the man spat, without moving. Adam chose to ignore the jab, focusing instead on ignoring both the blond on their heels and the honest-to-God _raven_ perched on the staircase bannister.

 

The man didn't growl or anything when they came nearer, so Adam knelt down for the quickest assessment he could manage, stripping off one glove to lay bare skin in the girl's forehead and involuntarily hissing when he felt the heat before he touched her. Deciding he could afford to wait on vitals until they were in the truck, he made brief, meaningful eye contact with Cheng.

 

“What's her name?”

 

“Opal,” the man supplied, sounding reluctant. Adam had to resist the urge to roll his eyes. It was more difficult than he expected.

 

“Alright, let's get going.”

 

The cot was easy to maneuver in the yard, even with Opal strapped down tighter than a NASCAR driver-- _she’s so light_ , he kept thinking, _she’s so light_ \--and it was nothing at all to get settled in the back and get to work.

 

 _Hand me an op site--damn, Parrish, you got an eighteen-gauge in there? she’s so damn tiny--she needs_ **_fluids_ ** _, Cheng, and while you’re up get a bag of normal saline--lemme get the four-lead set up, hang on--wait, let’s run the whole twelve--good idea--okay, sats are good, I’ll need a blood pressure in a sec--breathe, Parrish, hospital twelve right?--yeah, routine--_

 

“Can I ride in the back?”

 

The man’s soft, hesitant voice was so unexpected that Adam whirled around, freezing when he realized he’d left the cargo doors wide open and Opal’s father standing awkwardly in the grass. The emergency lights flung stained-glass shards of red and gold across his face, alternating between darkness and unearthly glow in the predawn of Henrietta.

 

Adam's heart thumped traitorously.

 

Then he stepped off the running board onto the concrete and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “You can ride in the front with Cheng, who talks more than any human being has a right to and drives like a lunatic...or you can sit in that exact seat and push buttons for me. Your choice.”

 

The man didn't hesitate to clamber into the seat behind Opal's head. Adam rapped his knuckles twice on the cabinet behind the driver’s seat, and Cheng slammed on the gas with more ferocity than strictly necessary, clearly chattering on the radio with one hand when he should have been steering with both.

 

“You weren't fucking kidding about his driving,” the man muttered. Adam sighed. It was going to be a _long_ transport.

 

_< <Dispatch, show Medic Nine transporting to hospital twelve, routine status, one rider on board.>>_

 

_< <Copy Medic Nine.>>_

 

"Ronan.”

 

Adam looked up from the report he’d barely started and was currently kicking himself for neglecting. After fifteen minutes of near-silence, any noise outside the steady chime of the cardiac monitor was loud enough to be startling. “Hm?”

 

The man shuffled nervously, hands clasped semi-politely in his lap. “I'm Ronan. I...never told you that.”

 

“Adam. Good to meet you. Do me a favor and hit that button by your right shoulder.”

 

“This one?” Ronan hovered the tip of his index finger over a button Adam did _not_ want him to push.

 

“One down.”

 

“Oh, this one?” Ronan indicated another wrong button, above the one he’d initially chosen.

 

“Other way.”

 

“ _This_ one?” Ronan was pointing to a third incorrect button and starting to grin like a cat that had just learned to unlock bird cages. Adam rolled his eyes, got up, leaned over, and mashed the desired button with a forceful thumb. The blood pressure cuff chugged to life. He was close enough to see Ronan's eyes glittering with satisfaction, the pale line of a scar through his eyebrow, the wrinkle on the bridge of his nose.

 

His treacherous heart thumped again.

 

He did _not_ have time for this.

 

Cheng hit a pothole, throwing Adam halfway toward the cargo doors and effectively ending whatever _that_ had been. Only years of deliberately-honed instinct made him reach up for the ceiling rail instead of falling on the floor, breaking his face, and maybe (with some luck) accidentally unlatching the door and tumbling off into the highway. He regained his balance with some difficulty, mostly inward, and revised his mental checklist when he caught Ronan snickering.

 

“Sorry!” was the faint call of his absolute asshole driver from the safety of the cab, barely audible over the groaning of the diesel engine.

 

Ronan was still smirking. “Do I get to press more buttons now?”

 

Before even thinking about responding to that, Adam picked the Cheng-proof computer off the floor and opened up the report he had still hardly worked on. “No,” he said, answering Ronan’s smile with a grin of his own. “This is the part where I ask you a lot of boring questions.”

 

Adam learned a great deal more about Ronan during the “twenty questions” section of the PCR than he would have guessed. He learned that Opal was a foster, but the paperwork for a real adoption was in the final stages of being approved. He learned that she’d come with a lot of baggage, but with family baggage of his own and a bullheaded species of stubbornness, Ronan was determined to give her the best childhood he could. He learned Ronan distrusted cops, firefighters, paramedics, and just anyone who tended to show up with flashing multicolored strobe lights, since he was a teenager. He learned that Ronan had wrestled with that fear nonstop after becoming a father, since alongside her emotional baggage Opal had come to him with a staggeringly long medical history. He learned Ronan had a three-year sobriety chip in his pocket at all times and was going strong for the four-year. He learned Ronan had been on the edge of losing everything--his house, his brothers, everything he owned, Opal--ever since his father died, and was scared shitless of it.

 

Most of it was not, strictly, necessary for the report. Adam quietly remembered a great deal more than he actually wrote down.

 

The blood pressure cuff was set to cycle automatically. Adam glanced up every now and again to reposition the SPO2 monitor that kept falling off her finger, to run the twelve-lead again (still normal), to see if she’d regained any consciousness (still unresponsive), to check the IV fluids. But there was really nothing left to do but call in his report to the hospital, and wait for Cheng to park the truck in a semi-sane fashion.

 

Rappa-Hannock County Medical was not, technically, a specialty children’s hospital. Its sole advantage over anything strictly local was that it was the only hospital in a five-hundred-mile radius better-equipped than the average redneck to handle patients under 65 at any given hour. Here, Opal would be lucky to get as much as an abdominal CT and a fresh unit of saline before being shooed off to a bigger-and-better facility that had things like cafeterias and onsite pediatricians. Ronan had seemingly cottoned on to the fact that this would not be his last stop, and was currently pacing around her tiny triage room, growling into his cell phone more than talking, his words unintelligible.

 

Adam finished handing off the paperwork and leaned his head on the wall, trying to fight the wave of dizziness and nausea that threatened to sweep him off his feet. Cheng could handle wiping the cot down and stowing it; he always did. Opal was stable and not yet ready for another ambulance ride. He still had a report to finish, but he also had an hour’s drive back to the station. For a brief moment, his responsibilities were taken care of, with nothing immediately pressing to take their place, so he shut his eyes and let the fatigue he’d been ignoring for twenty-six hours take hold of his bones.

 

When he felt the hand on his left shoulder, he’d long forgotten he wasn't the only soul in the building. It took all the restraint he had not to jump six feet off the ground. Instead, he turned and saw Ronan backing up a step, his hands flying upwards in surrender.

 

“Sorry, sorry, didn't mean to scare you,” he was saying. The words faded in as Adam turned his head toward the sound. “Was just trying to let you know your, uh, partner was getting impatient. He said he was gonna wait in the truck.”

 

It took Adam a second or two to realize the meaning of the words. If Cheng was already in the truck waiting, more time had passed than he’d planned, and it was long past time for them to already be on the road. He nodded and started toward the door; Ronan reached out and gently caught him by the sleeve.

 

“I, um.” The harsh fluorescent lights in hospital hallways tended to make everyone under them look strange and otherworldly. Ronan looked downright _young_ , his face a shifting mess of vulnerability and raw emotion that Adam had only seen glimpses of until now. It made him look like a different person altogether. “Don't think I didn't notice you looking at me like you were trying to decide whether or not to have CPS waiting for me at the emergency room.”

 

“Whoa, what--”

 

“I appreciate it.”

 

Adam blinked. Ronan blew out a breath and shifted his feet. He wouldn't quite meet Adam’s eyes. “All that time, I was freaking out about maybe the cops showing up too ‘cause I have a history, and thinking she really was gonna get taken away, and I was pissed that I didn't have any other choice--and you took care of her. So, uh...thanks.”

 

He sounded like he might be starting to cry, and he looked like he might exist in the mythical overlap between “guys who look like that” and “guys who cry.” Adam was quite bewildered, thoroughly at a loss for words, and painfully exhausted; it was six o’clock in the morning and his patient's father was thanking him for his hypervigilance, something he'd nearly lost his job over the year before. So instead of answering, he lifted the curtain separating Opal’s bed from the rest of the world, and peeked inside.

 

Sometime during the transport, she’d gone from unresponsive (and frankly, scary) to merely unconscious with no apparent explanation. Her fever had dipped a little and she was sleeping soundly, drowning in the blanket, only a thin film of sweat on her forehead betraying the truth of the situation. Ronan peeked over his shoulder and sighed when he caught sight of her looking so peaceful. Adam felt the warmth of his breath on his neck.

 

Adam ducked his head impulsively. “If you're gonna keep getting all up in my personal space, I should warn you I'm deaf on my left side.”

 

Ronan startled and backpedaled in a way that somehow put them face-to-face. He opened his mouth to say something, and Adam braced himself for the usual-- _he doesn't mean anything by it_ , he thought, _they're only ever curious_ \--but all that came out was a very soft, “oh.”

 

Then: “Do you wanna go out and get drinks or something?”

 

The gears of Adam’s mind clanged to a halt. Between the rational part of his brain listing reasons why this would be the _worst idea he's ever had_ , and the decidedly-less-rational part of his brain essentially doing a drunken tabletop victory dance, it was a miracle he managed to squeak, “I don't _drink._ ”

 

His traitorous heart thumped and thumped again. Ronan, inexplicably, merely grinned.

 

Adam remembered something else. “ _You_ don't drink!”

 

“Shit,” said Ronan. His grin widened. “I guess I'll have to cancel, since there's nowhere else to go.”

 

“Asshole,” Adam said. But he was grinning, too.

 

Before he could change his mind he was yanking a marker out of his pocket and scribbling his phone number between the curling tendrils tattooed on Ronan’s knuckles.

 

“That's my phone number,” he said, a little breathlessly, his insides squeezing pleasantly at the sight of Ronan pulling his hand back to stare at the numbers in disbelief. “My four-day starts Wednesday. We can do lunch or something.”

 

“I don't know what the fuck that means,” Ronan said, still staring. “I can't do Wednesday, though. Maybe, uh, text me when you get off work this weekend or whatever and I'll take you out to a twenty-four hour waffle house.”

 

Adam, who had never so much as set foot in a twenty-four hour waffle house in his life, laughed. “If it's all-you-can-eat, it's a date.”

 

The ER nurse chose that moment to trundle up with her portable monitor and clear her throat as awkwardly as possible. “Mr. Lynch?” she asked brightly. She barely cleared Ronan’s shoulder and was wearing an inordinate number of colorful barrettes. “I need to ask you some questions about your daughter.”

 

Now thoroughly interrupted, the moment was over, and Adam made his way to the sliding doors. He glanced back down the hall, where the nurse was interrogating him with a smile that resembled a well-polished knife. Ronan looked up, met his eyes, and smiled.

 

Adam smiled back.

 

Cheng had switched all the lights on and had his feet propped up on the dashboard, hat tipped low over his eyes. As Adam climbed into the seat and opened up his report, Cheng hit the siren with his middle finger, but he also put his feet down and knocked the hat to the floor.

 

For one dizzying moment, Adam didn't even see the report in front of him. He allowed himself one fantastical second to imagine a date: clocking out Monday morning, texting Ronan, sitting down to more food at once than he's ever eaten, spending hours talking about nothing and everything, kissing, _more_ \--

 

He shook his head. Right now he had things to do. “Let's go,” he said to Cheng, who put the truck in gear and sped off into the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Pynch Week 2017  
> Day 2: Superhero AU  
> (I guess this counts?)


End file.
